The other side of that wall

My fellow technical writer Earl Rich and I didn't always email each other about politics, literature and physics. Sometimes he would say something that made you feel understood. 

From January 23, 1995:

Nancy,

Sometimes I can envision you sitting on the other side of that wall, your overactive mind desperately searching for some outlet of creativity while forced to produce the mindless yet logical step-by-step instructions involved in Navigating a Dialog Box.

This is what really made him special, well beyond his physical beauty. Today is the 29th anniversary of his death, and I am thinking of him, on the other side of that final wall.

HEAVENS TO MERGATROYD! This blog is twenty years old!

Yes the name of this blog was inspired by
one of Snagglepuss's favorite exclamations.

My first blog post was not very inspiring: 

I'm still working out the kinks, come back later, it will be better. Thanks.

Back in those days we thought that George W. Bush was, and ever would be, the worst president of the United States. 

All these years I've been hogging the domain name mcclernan.com for myself, in spite of having many relatives, close and distant, who share the name. But so far nobody has complained.

I recapped the first ten years, back in 2015. Obama was president then, so things were looking up from the Bush years. 

So what's happened since November 2015?

I was blogging pretty heavily from 2015 through 2018, averaging about 300 blog posts per year, more or less. But blogging fell way off in 2019, when I only managed 59 posts and after that only managed 42, 28, 23, 29 and 34 posts each year after that. This year I have 43 posts, counting this one, so far. 

The reason blogging dropped off so much on Heavens to Mergatroyd is at least partly because I started my blog Pinkerite and instead of writing about politics and especially race pseudoscience on this blog, I started writing about those things over on Pinkerite instead.

I see that in 2015 I expressed my admiration for the feminist writer Sady Doyle who since then became Jude Doyle. I mentioned him in January of this year in a blog post on Pinkerite. 

2016 started out on a high note when I moved from Astoria back to Manhattan, to the Upper West Side in a quaint hundred-year-old walkup. Then I moved out thanks to unpleasant neighbors in 2021. 

Trump was elected. I immediately became interested in Canada and in the French language. I had been in Canada once, in 2005, before I started this blog. Since Trump was elected I visited Canada in 2017, 2018,  twice, then not again until January of this year. 

Part of the reason for the gap, I think, was because Biden defeated Trump in 2020, and I didn't feel as much of an urge to get out of the United States during that time. But when Trump was elected again in 2024, I went to Montreal during the inauguration, just to be out of a country full of morons who voted for a rapist fascist disgusting felon psychopath, clearly in the early-mid stages of dementia. 

And of course there was Covid.

In the past ten years I traveled to France and Slovenia.

I've written about learning French quite a few times. Thanks to my French studies I ended up learning more about Peppa Pig and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic than someone my age would ever expect to know. Dear god I know so much about My Little Pony now.

I  also created my own animations in French, but they are pig and pony-free.

I discovered Murderbot, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron. I knew J. D. Vance was a creep in 2016.

I've continued to express my appreciation for the Beatles and in particular for Paul McCartney in the past ten years. 

I've memorialized Earl Rich, a friend of mine who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1997, several times on this blog.

Quite a few people I have known have died in the past ten years. My childhood arch-enemy John Sayers, my young adulthood arch-enemy Laura Garth, my actor friend Tony White, another actor friend Doug Rossi, my college friend Geri Tuckett. And of course my cats, poor Miss Willow and poor Mr. Fuzz. But at least my cats lived about as long as cats normally live, the other people I mentioned here died before their time. Since my cats died, I've switched to caring for plants instead.

Theater-wise, things have been slow. I only managed to eke out one production, Norma Jeanne at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic about Marilyn Monroe in the past ten years, but I've written three solid full-length plays since 2020 and am working on a fourth.

Pete Duel, Judy Carne, Ben Murphy
-----------------------------------------

Here's a funny coincidence - I've written about Pete Duel on this blog - first in 2005, then again in 2015.

And the Pete Duel Memorial Site is still going strong in 2025. The entire series "Alias Smith and Jones" is now available on the Internet Archive.

One of my favorite episodes, "The Root of it All," was quite feminist for 1971. In the episode, Smith and Jones meet a feisty woman played by Judy Carne and another woman played by Victoria Thompson. 

Well Thompson showed up in a playwrights group I was part of for a couple of years in 2022-23. I knew I had seen her name before and after Googling around I discovered she had been in AS&J - but I never got a chance to ask her about the experience. But still, it was a funny coincidence.

In addition to this blog, I've had my blog NYCPlaywrights going since 2010, and Pinkerite since 2018.

TOP TEN POSTS IN THE PAST 10 YEARS

1. Did Brigitte Macron and her first husband appear in an episode of "French in Action" - mystere et boule de gomme! - over 16,000 visits.

2. Move over Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp! - 15.6K visits.

3. Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right & hereditarian connections (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite and also updated the diagram.) - 4.2K visits.

4. No, Erik Satie did not only eat white foods(!!!) - 2.98K visits.

5. What do the evo-psycho bros think "race" is? (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite). - 2.74K visits.

6. Qui était Jeanne de Bret? - 2.68K visits.

7. #Free Melania - yes I know Melania has only herself to blame for marrying Trump, but my god, you can see what a grotesque psychopath he is in this video. No wonder, according to Trump's biographer Michael Wolff, she hates him. -  2. 22K. visits.

8. RIP MTM - I discussed the death of Mary Tyler Moore. 2.15K visits.

9. Watching Justin Trudeau talk about feminism is the most erotic experience of my life - still undefeated - 1.94 K visits.

10. Manhattan statuary - surprisingly popular at 1.94K visits.

Will I manage to blog for another ten years? Time will tell.

You can read about the history of blogging here.

The school of Earl

Earl Rich was a great beauty, although you can't tell so much from his photographs, he was not photogenic. You had to see him in motion to truly appreciate him.

He was robbed of all his future years of glory at age 31 in a motorcycle accident.

Earl and I had a primarily epistolary relationship, if you count emails as letters. I've shared some on this blog:

Reality sandwich - I had the minister at Earl's memorial service read this out loud.  

 

Between you and me - the saga of our manager, Lisa who was sexually harassing him. 

And then there was his interest in quantum mechanics. 

This is from January 9, 1995

I must say, I was a little nervous about having you as an office mate at first - some women have that affect on me - but it has proven to be a very enlightening (and enjoyable) experience, without impeding my productivity! I bet I could a lot from you.

What about this guy (girl person, god) BRAHMA - is he really the creator of the universe, or just another lame excuse for a religious idol?

On a more serious note, have you ever heard of a guy named Neils Bohr? Apparently, he and Einstein had this big argument about Quantum Mechanics. Bohr said to Al: "You are not thinking, you are merely being logical." Pretty smooth, eh? I wonder which process our job requires...

...I will leave you with this thought from the chapter on Zen Banditos and the UnderLying Nature of Reality: The division between the microcosmic and macrocosmic is probably an illuisiory one, the result of the human mind to CATEGORIZE phenomena.

They say ignorance is bliss. Oh the joys of a public school education.

Until tomorrow,

Your slave 'till the end,

Earl - the Particle Man - Rich

From January 12, 1995

...your reference to sub-atomic particles is relevant, or should I say "charged." This dude says (or said) that the worldview of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order. I find that this theory applies directly to the status of my checking account. 

Anyway, it was, as usual, very nice to hear from you. (how's that for polite?)

Later Daze,

Earl (soon to be a wall away)

P. S. 

As you read this E-Mail, sub-atomic particles are moving through you at the rate of several per minute.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

He was soon to be a wall away because our manager, Lisa, the one who was sexually harassing him, didn't like us getting along so well, so moved him into an office with herself. Oof, such craziness. Of course this did not stop the emails, and in fact only caused them to increase since we could no longer simply chat.

The last line of the PS refers to the Almond Joy campaign slogan, already 18 years old in 1995. I thought it was a pretty funny PS though.

From January 17, 1995:

Of course my book on bandits exists! I've even discovered a chapter called "Schrodinger's Bandito". In fact, there's a quote from Erwin himself, but I won't reference it here as it's not relevant.

This quote, however, may be extremely relevant: "The mutual attraction of two celestial bodies is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." Yes, another one from Al's bullpen. He felt that sublimation was an art best left to the democrats. 

The REAL Program Manager,

Mr. Quark

PS 

It's incredible how much you remind me of this intensely-cool character (Mirna Minx) from "A Confederacy of Dunces." If you get a chance, you've gotta read it, maybe I'll pick up another copy...

PPS 

Thanks to your radical nature, my pacifistic outlook is rapidly diminishing.

He was such an expert tease. No wonder he drove our manager Lisa bonkers.

Today - yes today - thirty years later - I finally looked up this "book on bandits" and it turns out to be a novel from 1986 called "Cosmic Banditos: a contrabandista's quest for the meaning of life" by Allan Weisbecker. From his Wikipedia page I see Weisbecker was a surfer, and wrote about surfing, which is probably how Earl came to know of him, since Earl loved surfing.

So now I know why he referred to himself as "Mr. Quark." 

From the publisher of Cosmic Banditos:

Mr.Quark is a down-on-his-luck pot smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Columbia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible José. Only months before, these three and their fearless associates were rolling millions in cash and high grade marijuana, eluding prosecution on "ridiculously false" drug and terrorism charges. But times have quickly grown lean, and to liven up their exile, José decides to mug a family of American tourists. Among the spoils are physics texts, which launch Mr. Quark on a sidesplitting, boisterous adventure north to California, where he confronts the owner of the books with his own theories on relativity, the nature of the universe and looking for the meaning of life in all the wrong places.

In my defense, at the time I first read the email, you couldn't just Google around until you found something. In 1995 most people's experience of the Internet was gated communities - at work, Earl and I sent emails via Lotus Notes, and at home, we emailed via America Online. How did we get by in those ancient times?

On the other hand I did immediately read "A Confederacy of Dunces" to learn more about this "Mirna Minx" character. Her name is actually "Myrna Minkoff" but I believe the protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, refers to her as a "minx" at one point. 

I was not exactly sure how to feel about the comparison. Earl clarified in an email on January 18

Attention! PARALLEL is an important concept (even with sublimation). Parallel thoughts. Parallel events. Parallel realities. Parallel UNIVERSES?

According to the Chapter entitled "Zen Banditos", parallel universes do exist. And to quote the infamous Zhukov: "...the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says that different editions of us live in many different worlds simultaneously. An unaccountable number of them, and all of them, are real".

Kind of puts it all in perspective, does it not? What time is that Dallas rerun on, anyway?

Oh Mirna is quite the cool one. If you enjoyed Holden's romp through the rye field, you'll love what Ignatious does with Levi Pants. His correspondence with Mirna (Myrna?) is terrific. You are her, in many ways. Aside from being quite the philosopher, sexual expert, and the voice of the underprivileged/abused, she is also a frustrated film director. It is a must read even for a woman. How do you recognize a genius? The dunces are in a confederacy against him (her). The story behind the book, and the death of the author (I believe his name is J. Kennedy Tool) is, unfortunately, a real tragedy. This book is a prerequisite to "...Banditos" in the school of Earl.

By the way, I've never seen Lisa so angry as she was today! I feared for the upright nature of my partition (Office politics are so boring!)

See ya at the factory.

EARL

"The concept of entropy dictates that when anything happens, it makes the universe a more disorderly place." Michael Talbot.

Earl knew me as a "sexual expert" strictly based on PG-rated conversations, not through physical experience.

Well now of course I am going to have to read Cosmic Banditos. I don't know what took me so long.

I find it fascinating that Michael Talbot, who died in 1992, espoused "a theoretical model of reality that suggests the physical universe is akin to a hologram based on the research and conclusions of David Bohm and Karl H. Pribram.[2] According to Talbot ESP, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena are a product of this holographic model of reality."

One of the two incidents in my life that made me consider the possibility of extra-sensory perception happened the day Earl died, when I had an auditory hallucination that someone was calling my name and saying "Good-bye." I had never experienced anything like it before and never since. It was real enough that I got up and looked out the window to see if someone was calling me from outside. That night I had a dream someone was trying to tell me something. It wasn't until the afternoon of the next day that one of our former coworkers called to tell me that Earl was gone.

I added the links to this selection from January 19, 1995:

Dearest Nancy,

You are the swizzle-stick of my eight-hour cocktail. I hope I didn’t upset you today with that email stuff. No more from me, I promise. You have your hands full. It seems that everyone wants a piece of Nancy! 

 

I hope you re-read Confederacy. I doubt very much that you can enjoy or appreciate it fully in a one-sitting reading. But who knows? You never cease to amaze me.

So you want Banditos? I will eventually give it to you. I don't know why, but I have this reluctance to lend it to you. Actually, I have an idea from where that insecurity stems -- maybe we can delve into those dark recesses of my mind during our next drawing session. In the meantime, I've shelved Banditos, and am blowing the dust off some other classics -- "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" and "Synchronicity" -- two books I'm sure you're familiar with. I won't re-read them, however, until I've made some headway with the materials you've so graciously lent to yours truly.

Hey, I've gotta keep this letter short and boring, as I've already fallen behind in my work. But I also wanted to mention that the newspaper article you lent me makes mention of P. Caputo. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote a book called "A Rumor of War" -- it's a terrific novel about his real-life experiences in Vietnam. A real enlightening book. I can't imagine Ted going through all of that. He seems like such a sweet-natured guy. The thought of him toting an AK-47 seems sort of ludicrous.

I'll leave you with this quote from the Journal of Religious Thought: "Chance is a statistical concept which 'explains' deviations within certain patterns of probability." Hey - it beats the hell out of confession.

Hoping to see you shortly,

Your Friend and Fellow Co-Worker

E. B. Weatherington, IV

I love that metaphor so much: "you are the swizzle stick of my eight-hour cocktail." It's so good, I just now suddenly wondered if it was a well-known expression that Earl had borrowed from somewhere. But when I Googled it I found nothing.

But Google's AI had plenty to say:

The phrase "you are the swizzle stick of my eight-hour cocktail" is not a common or famous quote. Instead, it appears to be a unique, poetic expression celebrating the effect someone has on another person. The phrase combines the literal function of a swizzle stick with the extended, metaphoric duration of an "eight-hour cocktail".

Interpretation of the metaphor

• The swizzle stick: This object is used to mix and blend the ingredients in a cocktail. In the metaphor, the person is the swizzle stick—the active, stirring agent who brings all the "ingredients" of the other person's life together. They have a vital, enlivening effect. 

• The cocktail: A cocktail is a complex, flavorful, and enjoyable mixture. In this case, it represents the speaker's life or experience. 

• Eight hours: The "eight-hour" modifier signifies an entire workday, a significant portion of waking life. A cocktail that lasts this long is a potent and enduring one. The effect isn't a brief or fleeting one; it's a long, sustained experience.

The full meaning 

 

Putting it all together, the phrase likely means:

• "You are the person who brings energy and joy to my life."
• "You mix up all the different parts of my day to make my life vibrant and meaningful."
• "You are the essential element that makes my extended, 'all-day' experience so much better."

It is a playful and deeply appreciative compliment, stating that the person is the key ingredient that makes the ordinary routine of life into something special and delicious.

I know Earl would have gotten a kick out of that. I hate AI but I admit, I like it too.

The only book I can find called "Synchronicity" is the one by Carl Jung. Another coincidence - the Wikipedia article on the topic says:

Contemporary physicist T. Filk writes that quantum entanglement, being "a particular type of acausal quantum correlations", was plausibly taken by Pauli as "a model for the relationship between mind and matter in the framework [...] he proposed together with Jung".[31] Specifically, quantum entanglement may be the physical phenomenon which most closely represents the concept of synchronicity.[31]

Quantum entanglement, called "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein is, according to Quanta Magazine:

The “spooky action” that bothered Einstein involves a quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, in which two particles that we would normally think of as distinct entities lose their independence. Famously, in quantum mechanics a particle’s location, polarization and other properties can be indefinite until the moment they are measured. Yet measuring the properties of entangled particles yields results that are strongly correlated, even when the particles are far apart and measured nearly simultaneously. The unpredictable outcome of one measurement appears to instantly affect the outcome of the other, regardless of the distance between them — a gross violation of locality.

I've been wondering if there was some kind of mental radio-waves/quantum entanglement thing going on between me and Earl on that September morning in 1997. I feel like it was too weird to be a coincidence, but on the other hand I don't want to believe in woo. So why not quantum entanglement?

The drawing session Earl mentions was one of two sittings we had in which I drew Earl in profile. One was in pencil, the other was pencil and then finished in Magic Marker, which is my favorite of the two. I've posted it on this blog before, but I like it, so here it is again. I have to frame this one of these days.

I hung it on the wall of my office cubicle and Lisa reported me to HR, claiming that I was sexually harassing Earl. Oh Lisa, you shameless hypocrite. Earl spoke up on my behalf, denying any harassment.

One of the reasons I'm glad I made the minister read Earl's email at the memorial service is because the last person to get up and give a testimonial about how special Earl was during the service was Lisa. I almost did not get up myself, but once I realized she would have the last word during the service, I knew I had to let Earl have the last word. I know Earl would be happy that I did that, quantum entanglement or not.

Remembering Earl Rich 26 years later

It's been 26 years since Earl Rich died. He was only 31, just a month shy of 32. 

He would be almost 58 now. I can't imagine it.

This is him in Valley Forge, 1995.

Earl Rich ~ one quarter century gone

I've been trying to write the perfect essay about Earl Rich for all these years.

This image, via Google Street View, is where Earl died on September 7, 1997. A guy named John Pluta (died in 2013) was driving in the opposite direction and suddenly turned left into the side street, his pickup truck becoming a wall of death at the instant Earl barreled into that t-intersection.

Just a few seconds either way and Earl would have been fine.

I've written about Earl on this blog many times, usually on the anniversary of his death. I did miss observing the anniversary in 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018. But I've had this blog for about seventeen years now, so not a bad record. And I've written about him a few times on other dates besides the anniversary, so that kind of makes up for it.

It seems to me that more people should know about Earl. He was a sort of celebrity in his own world, which is probably common for very attractive people. He resembled a young Warren Beatty. Earl's father-in-law (died in 2019), an editor at the Philadelphia Daily News, was quoted in the newspaper, saying that Earl was "one of those guys you got to know within minutes and felt like he was your buddy."

Who was Earl Rich, to the world at large? He was a nobody, a tax-paying citizen with a 9 to 5 job and a mortgage. For all his exceptional beauty and charm, his legacy is little more than my binder full of emails and this minimalist web site.

But Earl could write an elegant turn of phrase, as in this email:

Dearest Nancy,

You are the swizzle-stick of my eight-hour cocktail. I hope I didn’t upset you today with that email stuff. No more from me, I promise. You have your hands full. It seems that everyone wants a piece of Nancy!

I hope you re-read Confederacy (of Dunces). I doubt very much that you can enjoy or appreciate it fully in a one-sitting reading. But who knows? You never cease to amaze me.

I’ll leave you with this quote from the Journal of Religious Thought: “Chance is a statistical concept which ‘explains’ deviation within certain patterns of probability. “ Hey – it beats the hell out of confession.

Hoping to see you shortly,
Your Friend and Fellow Co-Worker,
E.B. Weatherington, IV

Now nobody wanted a piece of Nancy. But that's how Earl made you feel, like you were as fabulous as he was. And that line: "You are the swizzle-stick of my eight-hour cocktail." I'd had many different jobs up to that time (and many more after) and neither before nor since have I had a co-worker who could write a sentence like that. Nor want to write such a sentence to me.

Part of my problem in writing an essay about Earl is that I feel I have to tell everything - as if he was a celebrity and I must brag about every time we connected, like smoking a joint in my car in Valley Forge, or when he loaned me his surfboard, or the time he pretended to be in love with my sister and called her on a dare. Or the time he was vacationing in Key West and tracked down my ex-husband, who lived there at the time.

Since Earl had the knack of making everybody feel fabulous, I often wondered if our friendship meant anything to him, or whether I just happened to be there and he would have established such a connection with anybody else. But his widow seemed to confirm that I had been special to Earl when she invited me to meet with her and Earl's sister at his favorite Cape May restaurant, on the first anniversary of his death.

After writing about thirty different versions of my Earl essay, both on this blog and off, I think I must resign myself to focusing on only two main themes: how our co-worker Lisa was obsessed with him and sexually harassed him - this was the 1990s, her behavior would never fly today; and the ESP incident.

Because Earl really was, technically, a nobody, no matter how special to me. If I want others to care about his existence the essay itself has to be notable. So the quest continues.

In memory of Earl Rich

I finally got around to donating to the Cousteau Society

Remembering Earl Rich

January 1995

Today marks 23 years since the death of Earl Rich.

I'm working on a collection of essays about people I have known who died and I'm writing a piece about Earl. I've written about him many times on this blog but it's good to have one polished and comprehensive piece of work.

This is how it begins:

I am skeptical of claims of the supernatural, so there must be a rational explanation for the sound outside my window, someone calling my name and saying "good-bye," on the morning Earl Rich died.  

I've often wondered what the rational explanation could be. In the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions" one of his characters died this way: "Like all Earthlings at the point of death, Mary Young sent faint reminders of herself to those who had known her. She released a small cloud of telepathic butterflies..."  

I thought of that Vonnegut passage just after I looked out my window to see who was calling. Nobody was there.  In his book "The Demon Haunted World" astronomer Carl Sagan said that one claim of extra-sensory perception that deserved serious study was this: 'people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images "projected" at them.' 

Sagan doesn't speculate on how thoughts or images might be projected. One of my theories is that maybe neurons in the brain, which send and receive electrical signals, at a moment of extreme stress, could transmit electrical pulses at a wide distance. Another theory I have was inspired by reading about quantum mechanics. There is a phenomenon called "entanglement" where two particles become "entangled" and then the state of one particle is always matched by the state of the other particle, even when very far away from each other. It's so strange and counter-intuitive it freaked Albert Einstein right out. He called it "spooky action at a distance." That sounds about right to me: spooky action at a distance. 

nt faint 

Earl Rich, gone but not forgotten

Earl Rich, Valley Forge PA, January 1995
More photos here

I found myself thinking of my friend Earl Rich a couple of weeks ago, thanks to a tweet from Newt Gingrich.

Earl has been dead for twenty-two years, as of today. Tempus fugit.

Gingrich first came to public prominence when Earl and I worked together in King of Prussia, PA and Earl liked to joke about supporting him, so there's always a chance I'll think of Earl when Gingrich is mentioned. Or tweets.

Which is annoying because Earl Rich is a beautiful angel in heaven now, while Gingrich is still here, being a complete asshole.

I even mentioned Gingrich the last time I observed Earl Rich's death on this blog, two years ago.

I included a scan of Earl's obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer in that post two years ago, and while re-reading it preparing to write this blog post, I wondered if I could find out whatever happened to John S. Pluta, the guy driving the truck that Earl smashed into. And thanks to this Age of Internet, I believe I found him. Right name, right location and exactly the right age. He died in 2013.

Twenty-two years later and thinking back on Earl and my strange workplace relationship with him, he seems even more special than ever. I don't know why I was able to come to know this co-worker so much better than any other coworker I've ever had, except maybe Rosemary, who now lives in Australia, and who coincidentally I just received a postcard from yesterday. Rosemary and I are friends because Earl thought we had a lot in common and encouraged us to talk.

Oddly Rosemary is the only woman I knew at work who was immune to Earl's beauty. And she's not gay, she's been married to her husband for twenty years now. And plenty of men were attracted to Earl as well, although of course back then, especially, they weren't likely to admit it. But for some reason, she alone was not completely enthralled by Earl.

I don't know how I ended up exchanging so many emails and confidences with Earl. Was it our ages? Was it that office email was still new? Congruent personalities? A happenstance of time and place? I can't imagine being so open with someone at work, not now.

I wonder what he would look like now. He had such beautiful hair. He would have been 53, it would surely be thinner or greyer now. But of course his charm wasn't only dependent on his physical beauty, as impressive as it was. He had a certain sweetness you rarely see in men although he could also be funny and silly and a wise-ass. And he was far more nervous about social situations, which he mentioned to me, than I would ever guess of someone so perfectly suited to society. He would complain about how popular he was, saying he was exhausted by all the socializing on weekends. I wonder if that would have lessened, once he got into his 50s, the way casual socializing fades off for so many people at that age. But with Earl, who knows. He was sui generis.

It seems odd that other people who knew him don't mention him online. I know this because I looked -  it's just me and his widow Michele who, I assume, paid for the domain name earlrich.com and who set up the web site. Such a phenomenon as Earl should have a great number of tributes. But really who was Earl, to the world at large? For all his beauty and charm he was a nobody, a tax-paying citizen with a 9-5 office job, and a wife and a house. A technical writer. A guy who enjoyed riding his motorcycle, his damned accursed motorcycle, on weekends.

If only it was raining that day, or he decided to drive his car, or he had stopped at a convenience store to get gum. An infinite number of things could have prevented Earl Rich from dying at 31 and who knows what he would have made of himself. I'm sorry for all the things he didn't get to see, save of course for 9/11 and 11/9. I think he would love today's laptops, and high tech gadgets. And I bet he would have enjoyed the TV show Archer. And he might still be teasing me about Newt Gingrich.

While Googling around for any traces of Earl online I came across his father-in-law's fairly recent obituary. I had no idea he was a bigwig in the Philadelphia journalism scene. I feel like Earl should have had the same kind of full-page tribute, so important, oddly, inexplicably important he was in my life. But he didn't really have a chance to do much. "He was robbed" is what my coworker Rachel, who also knew Earl, said of his death at the time.

A year after Earl's death I was invited by Michele to meet at The Ugly Mug in Cape May New Jersey. Cynthia, Earl's sister was there too. I don't remember the conversation now, which of course centered around Earl. But I was flattered to be invited to meet these two strangers with whom my only connection was knowing Earl Rich for a mere three years, compared to their ties of blood and marriage. I heard from Michele a few times after that by email, but nothing in the last twenty years.

Earl once confided to me that his dream was to be a writer living in Greenwich Village. He was a great reader of fiction and got me to read Crime and Punishment, Lolita and A Confederacy of Dunces. I like to think he would approve of me living in Manhattan, albeit not in Greenwich Village but maybe the next-best thing, the Upper West Side, as a technical writer, playwright and blogger. And since he is not around to contradict me, I say he would, definitely, approve.

And Michele, when you're in New York City you should look me up, I'll buy you a drink and we'll reminisce.

Good night, sweet Prince. I wish you were still eating that sandwich.

Earl Rich died 20 years ago in a motorcycle crash. I've written about Earl several other times on this blog.

He used to joke about being a Republican but we both despised Newt Gingrich. Who is still here, while Earl is gone. 

I wonder what Earl would say if he was told that Donald Trump - who of course was famous even 20 years ago - had become president.

His family had a memorial service for Earl, and I was late arriving thanks to one of Earl's friends giving me the wrong time. So by the time I showed up, the church was packed and it was SRO and the service was winding down. I stood in the back as various people shared their memories of Earl. And the last person who shared memories before the end of the service was a woman named Lisa who had been been a supervisor to both of us when I worked at the company where I met Earl, PTS. And I knew Earl despised her, so I couldn't let that stand, with her being the last one to remember him aloud. So I walked down the church aisle and handed the minister an email that Earl had written to me a year and a half earlier. The minister read it to the gathered mourners:

"I like that phrase "reality sandwich". I think I understand where your coming from. 

Everyone has to take a bite of that sandwich once in a while. Although the sandwich may taste like shit, it's sometimes necessary medicine for those who are stuck with eating it (sorta like cough syrup).
And it doesn't ALWAYS taste bad. In fact, sometimes it can taste downright good. Many of us take those good moments for granted. We both have to take the good with the bad, just like everyone else. But at least we're eating the sandwich! 

Of course that bite of sandwich can get stuck in your throat if you don't chew thoroughly; thats when it can make you blue. I'm a pretty fast eater and I'm always looking for something to act as a chaser (an admittedly BAD habit). In fact, I had a pretty-damned big chunk of that sandwich stuck in my throat this morning, and I was feeling somewhat discolored. And without any serious pharmaceuticals. But then a pretty cool thing happened. 

I had taken a double-dosage of some cold remedy that's been sitting in our medicine cabinet for quite some time (I do have a cold). I went out for a drive. The sun was out, the snow was everywhere, and Pluto was in the passenger seat. I had a mild buzz going (much to my surprise) either from the medicine, or from my cold. WWDB's Sunday With Sinatra show was churning out some of Franks greatest stuff. The next thing you know - lifes problems seemed kinda distant. Its like for some weird instant you can tune into life. It always seems to happen in different places, at different times, and for different reasons. But its still pretty cool when it does happen. So no matter how fucked over things can get, good moments can still happen. The fact that they don't last, and the fact that there ARE bad moments, are what make the good times worth living for. If those perfect moments lasted, we would all take them for granted. Like that poem by that guy, I think its called "Nothing Gold Can Stay" but I'm not sure. 

Hey, I never claimed to much of a spiritual guy. Thats why I like republicans. 

Well, Monday morning is right around the corner so I have some serious relaxing to take care of. I hope you saved some of that work for me. 

Piece, 

Earl

I was really glad I did that. Earl got the last word at his own funeral.

Someone reworked his old web site - I assume his widow Michelle - moving it from a sub-folder on Voicenet to his very own domain, earlrich.com. But the content is quite different - Earl's original "CUBE" contained his resume and links to computer-related sites and photos of his friends surfing. I don't think the picture there now of the guy with a surfboard is him, I think that's a stock photo. The web site doesn't have any photos of Earl which is a damn shame, he was such a beautiful man. Although photography barely did justice to his beauty.

The site's home page is named 9/7/97 which is the date he died. 

Here is his obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer. He would have been 32 in another month. 

I told him not to get a motorcycle. They are too dangerous. *sigh*

I feel like Earl should be more famous. I am in touch now with only three people who knew him, two former PTS co-workers who are Facebook friends (and I barely ever talk to them there) and my friend Rosemary - Earl helped us become friends - who lives in Austria.

Earl was so beautiful and so beloved and he made such a big impact on my life in the brief time I knew him - only three years. But he inserted himself into my life in a few other ways besides the email. In the summer of 1995 he took a vacation in Key West, where my ex-husband was living at the time and he actually found my ex-husband there and spoke to him a little. My ex-husband was easy to find then he would ride around town on a three-wheeler with his young son in a side-car. 

Then there was the time he pretended to be interested in my sister Eileen (which I never actually believed as Earl was married.)  He sang the song "Come On Eileen" at me and so I think of him - that and several songs by the Beach Boys - whenever I hear it. And he came to my desk at the office and picked up the phone and actually called Eileen to complete the charade. She took it pretty well when I explained it was Earl's bizarre idea of a joke.

Earl lent me one of his old surfboards which I used to try to surf although never got the hang of it. But that was a lovely gesture on his part.

Earl Rich c. 1995 by Nancy McClernan

We communicated via email more than I've communicated with almost anybody I've ever known  - and certainly more than I've ever communicated with anybody else by email. I still have a big binder of print-outs of many of our back-and-forth emails. Most of them are just silly and as I review them now I see that I wrote more often to him, and at much greater length each time than vice-versa but he would occasionally confide in me with some fairly personal stuff, especially about the aforementioned Lisa our supervisor, who was basically sexually harassing him. 

One time when I drew Earl's portrait - see image on the right - which Earl sat for quite willingly and which was certainly not erotic in any way. Lisa told HR I was harassing Earl, the shameless hypocrite that she was.

Lisa was a pretty unattractive woman (one of our co-workers referred to her as "a troll") and in any case Earl was married and she was his supervisor so it was just wrong on many levels and it was quite upsetting to Earl although he tried to be cool about it as you can see here:

BETWEEN YOU AND ME: I've been getting AOL mail from Lisa. Have you? She's asked me twice what my hidden talents are, and I told her they were listed to the repetitive re-booting of my PC. I hope I didn't sound too cold. I try to keep my responses to her E-Mail down to two or three lines, if possible. And I desperately avoid anything the tray even com minutely near to resembling a semblance of being flirtatious. Her last E-Mail was definitely hinting at something (or am I being paranoid)? I haven't thought of a way to answer it yet. I hope she never becomes our official manager. Don't get me wrong, I know she'd be good at it, but as it is I sometimes fee like I have to tiptoe around her. Like this picture thing. If it was anybody else, I'd just say "Hey what're you doing with my picture? Why didn't you ask me for one?" But I can't say that to her. It kind of irks me. Not that you gave them to her, or even that she has them, but rather that she has them and I'm not supposed to know about it. She could've asked me for them, but I guess that would've been strange too. I can't believe how fucking strange the whole situation is. Oh well, we've all been in weird situations before. I just wonder how it'll pan out. 

*** 

Lisa's been saying some interesting things to Patrick also, between you and I. He handles it very well, that well-balanced Spartacus that he is. But her sexual comments don't bother me that much. It's more like her quest for power, her domineering nature. And you're not the only person she sends bad vibes to. She seems to have it in for certain others, but interestingly enough, they are mostly women. I can be uncomfortable around a group costing entirely of women but then again I'd rather not be hanging out with 12 guys. I think everybody is the most comfortable in mixed company. I doubt that I'm the only one who feels this way. I know that if I'm with a bunch of guys and no women are around, the guys may have a tendency to say things and act a certain way. Once a woman is present, a noticeable change (in a lot of cases, but now all) can be seen. Wouldn't it suck to be the person responsible for changing a group's behavior? I'm just a paranoid nutcase: I fit right in here at PTS (Paranoid Towers of Schizophrenia). 

*** 

I didn't let Patrick know how I felt about Lisa because they are pretty tight. They have tea together twice a day, and they walk in the park a lot. (sometimes I go with them, but L's been irritating me so I've been getting out of it as of late) Do you think he'll tell her?? I hope not, or else things are gonna get nasty. Yesterday (thurs) Patrick came into our office, looked at me, and asked "How's Earl doing today?" and before I could say anything Lisa said "He's a little better than yesterday, but we'll see" or something long those lines and I just snapped and said, "keep your nose out of it". But then I felt so bad, because she seemed to take it kinda hard, so I took your advice and spoke with her. I basically smoothed things over - I think these things move in cycles. Although I don't like the way she enjoys talking about other people, the way in which she manipulates ted, and her quest for power (yesterday she was actually getting loud with someone on the phone - I tried not to listen, but couldn't help it - She was going off about how somebody on her Worship Committee didn't get her approval to do something), I do think she's intelligent, and I'm gonna have to live with her for a while. She loves it at PTS, and I'm staying until something better comes along. So I'm going to make myself get along with her - it's not always that hard, sometimes we get along OK without either of us trying. No big deal, until the next explosion. But what's the deal with a worship committee? Why do people need to be told about how to worship? OKOkokok. For now, everything is back to peachy keen, and its gonna stay that way, if I can help it.
Now that you've listened to me spill my guts for the last few days, hows things on your end?

What a sweet and sensitive man. And of course he never did get out of there. He died on the weekend, on his way to enjoy surfing at the Jersey shore.

He would be 52 years old now. I wish he was still eating that sandwich.

RIP ENR

This portrait is of my dear departed Earl Nelson Rich. I've already posted this online in my tribute page to Earl. He died 18 years ago this September. He was a beautiful man, but he was also smart and unusually sweet. Everybody loved him, and his memorial service was packed.

I thought I would repost the drawing because I severely cropped the other one, and I also fiddled with it in Photoshop.

The original drawing, on the left here, shows Earl in front of one of those antique giant computer monitors that we had back in the 1990s, which is fun. But more importantly you can see that for this marker drawing, instead of doing the under-drawing in pencil, I did it in orange marker, and then I redrew the lines better in grey marker. I blew away the orange marker for the other version of this picture, but it's nice to see them in the original - they make it look like Earl has a kind of holy glow around him - which he did.

Earl Nelson Rich

Around this time of year I often think of my dear friend Earl, who died in 1997, in a motorcycle accident. Motorcycles are the devil. But his death was in September, I think of him this time of year because I persuaded him in the winter to let me take photos of him during our lunch break in Valley Forge Park which was near where we worked together at old PTS Learning Systems in King of Prussia PA.

So that would have been January 1995, twenty years ago. Wow. I took the photo on the left during that session, I planned to do a painting of him from the photos but never did. The closest I got was a pencil drawing and a magic marker sketch, which I drew both from life, and which you can see on this essay I wrote about him A Long Essay on a Brief Life - which I started in 2001 and still haven't completed.

Everybody was in love with Earl, he was so beautiful and sweet, but our manager Lisa was completely crazy about him and she was very possessive of him too, which was insane since he was married. She was so jealous that when she saw the magic marker sketch hanging on my cubicle wall, which I drew with Earl's full permission - he posed for it - she reported me to HR for sexual harassment. People are just unbelievable sometimes. But Earl had that kind of charm, he could just drive you crazy with wanting him. I certainly wasn't immune to that myself, but I never forgot for a moment that he was married. I later commiserated with his wife after he died, but I haven't heard from her in a long time. I hope she was able to find a new guy in her life, but very few men could compare to Earl. What an awful loss.

anti-groupmind

The most popular person I've ever known, my dear departed Earl Rich, used to always warn me against the "groupmind." This amused me because if there was ever anybody who was in a position to benefit from like-thinking and conformity, it was Earl. Although maybe I shouldn't say benefit - he used to complain that he never had any time to himself for all the people competing for his attention - his wife, his immediate family and his large group of friends.
Well, I never had much use for the groupmind myself - I've never been popular in part because I've always been more interested in expressing my opinions than in being liked. And for a woman, especially, this is a huge drawback - women don't get to be crusty curmudgeons, our first job is to be agreeable.

In any case, I was pleased to find some vindication in last week's New Yorker article Brainstorming Doesn't Really Work, which is not available in its entirety online alas, just the abstract, which says:

By analyzing 19.9 million peer-reviewed academic papers and 2.1 million patents from the past fifty years, he has shown that levels of teamwork have increased in more than ninety-five per cent of scientific subfields. Discusses the work of Charlan Nemeth, whose studies suggest that the ineffectiveness of brainstorming stems from the very thing that Osborn thought was most important. “Debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition,”

Later on, the article discusses the relevance for theatre:

Criticism allows people to dig below the surface of the imagination and come up with collective ideas that aren't predictable. And recognizing the importance of conflicting perspectives in a group raises the issue of what knds of people will work together best. Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern, has spent his career trying to find what the ideal composition of a team would look like. Casting around for an industry to study that would most clearly show the effects of interaction, he hit on Broadway musicals. He'd grown up in New York City and attended his first musical at the age of nine. "I went to see 'Hair'," Uzzi recalls. "I remember absolutely nothing about the music, but I do remember the nude scene. That just about blew my mind. I've been a fan of Broadway ever since."

Uzzi sees musicals as a model of group creativity. "Nobody creates a Broadway musical by themselves," he said. ""The production requires too many different kinds of talent. " A composer has to write songs with a lyricist and a librettist; a choreographer has to work with a director, who is probably getting notes from the producers.

Uzzi wanted to understand how the relationships of these team members affected the product. Was it better to have a group composed of close friends who had worked together before? He undertook a study of every musical produced on Broadway between 1945 and 1989. To get a full list of collaborators, he sometimes had to track down dusty old Playbills in theatre basements. He spent years analyzing the teams behind four hundred and seventy-four productions, and charted the relationships of thousands of artists, from Cole Porter to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Uzzi found that the people who worked on Broadway were part of a social network with lots of interconnections: it didn't take many links to get from the librettist of "Guys and Dolls" to the choreographer of "Cats." Uzzi devised a way to quantify the density of these connections, a figure he called Q. If musicals were being developed by teams of artists that had worked together several times before - a common practice because Broadway producers see "incumbent teams" as less risky - those musicals  would have an extremely high Q. So a musical created by a team of strangers would have a low Q.

Uzzi then tallied his Q readings with information about how successful the productions had been. "Frankly, I was surprised by how big the effect was," Uzzi told me. "I expected Q to matter, but I had no idea it would matter this much." According to the data, the relationships among collaborators emerged as a reliable predictor of Broadway success. When the Q was low - less than 1.7 on Uzzi's five-point scale - the musicals were likely to fail. Because the artists didn't know one another, they struggled to work together and exchange ideas. "This wasn't so surprising," Uzzi says. "It takes time to develop a successful collaboration." But, when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation. According to Uzzi, this is what happened on Broadway during the ninteen-twenties, which he made the focus of a separate study. The decade is remembered for its glittering array of talent - Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, and so on - but Uzzi's data reveals that ninety per cent of musicals produced during the decade were flops, far about the historical norm. "Broadway had some of the biggest names ever," Uzzi explains. "But the shows were too full of repeated relationships, and that stifled creativity." 

The best Broadway shows were produced by networks with an intermediate level of social intimacy. The ideal level of Q - which Uzzi and his colleague Jarrett Spiro called the "bliss point" - emerged as being between 2.4 and 2.6. A show produced by a team whose Q was within this ranged was three times more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced by a team with a  score below 1.4 or above 3.2. It was also three times more likely to be lauded by the critics. "The best Braodway teams, by far, were those with a mix of relationships," Uzzi says. "These teams had some old friends, but they also had newbies. This mixture meant that the artists could interact efficiently - they had a familiar structure to fall back on - but they also managed to incorporate some new ideas. They were comfortable with each other, but the weren't too comfortable."

Uzzi's favorite example of "intermediate Q" is "West Side Story," one of the most successful Broadway musicals ever. In 1957, the play was seen s a radical departure from Braodway conventions, both for its focus on social problems and for its extended dance scenes. The concept was dreamed up by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Berstein and Arthur Laurents. They were all Braodway legends, which might make "West Side Story" look like a show with high Q. But the project also benefitted from a crucial injection of unknown talent, as the established artists realized that they needed a fresh lyrical voice. After an extensive search, they chose a twenty-five-year-old lyricist who had never worked on a Broadway musical before. His name was Stephen Sondheim.

I've run NYCPlaywrights play readings with the idea that playwrights need to hear what people who aren't part of their in-group think about their plays. Far too often I've seen theatre groups completely dominated by insiders who are simply an echo-chamber for each other and no real criticism is allowed to be expressed - not fully, not completely. Now most people like it that way, but it doesn't make you a better writer. Quite the opposite. It's nice to have studies like these vindicate my approach.

Death Trap Fancy

Is the Era of the Motorcycle Over? asks Frederick Seidel in the NYTimes.

I hope so.

He suggests that young men are buying iPhones instead of motorcycles, because both have sleek glamor. I don't think that's why, but even if it was, that's fine - your iPhone won't kill you (no definitive connection between cell phones and cancer has been found) and it won't kill your friends. You can't say that about motorcycles. I knew two people who were killed thanks to a motorcycle - the first was Peggy, the sister of my friend Craig, who flew off the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle. The boyfriend survived.

The second was my dear Earl Rich who didn't see an oncoming pickup truck make a sudden left-hand turn in front of him until it was too late.

My brother Kevin was almost injured by a motorcyclist who was driving in the oncoming lane and whose boot got caught in the lane divider - the motorcyclist went flying across two lanes of traffic and landed on my brother's windshield. The boot, with foot inside, remained wedged in the lane divider. The motorcyclist died and if my brother had been on a motorcycle instead of a car, he would probably have been killed too.

How dangerous are motorcycles? The Traffic Safety website has the facts:

• Motorcycles are the most dangerous type of motor vehicle to drive. These vehicles are involved in fatal crashes at a rate of 35.0 per 100 million miles of travel, compared with a rate of 1.7 per 100 million miles of travel for passenger cars.


• Motorcyclists were 35 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a crash in 2006, per vehicle mile traveled, and 8 times more likely to be injured.


• Approximately 80% of motorcycle crashes injure or kill a motorcycle rider, while only 20% of passenger car crashes injure or kill a driver or passenger in their vehicle.

More fun facts on the web site.

The Traffic Safety site also mentions that more people over 40 and more women are driving motorcycles now. I'm sure that does nothing to help the cachet of driving a motorcycle now that it isn't something cool young guys mostly do. God knows plenty of men over 40 on online dating sites like to post pictures of themselves with their motorcycles - or even better just their motorcycles. Clearly over-40 guys believe it makes them look desirable to own a motorcycle.

Unlike the glory days of motorcycles, women are now much more likely to own their own vehicles - because they are more likely to have jobs. They aren't as likely to need a man to drive them around and have less patience to be driven around on a vehicle that permits neither conversation nor driving in inclement weather. Motorcycles are a luxury in which the costs have outweighed the benefits of coolness.

Seidel ends his paen to motorcycles this way:

In Dallas, at Advanced Motorsports, his motorcycle dealership, Jeff Nash, a gentleman and one of the great Ducati racebike tuners in America, and a racer himself, deplores the passivity of the young who would rather be home with their iPads playing computer games than astride the red-meat lightning of an 1198 Superbike blazing down a Texas highway making that unmistakable growling deep Ducati sound. Mr. Nash would go further.

Better to be out in the air astride just about any motorcycle alive!

But if he really wants young men to be outside, what's wrong with walking? What's wrong with skateboards? With rollerblades? With bicycles? All give you more exercise, make almost no noise, burn no fossil fuels, and are much, much safer.

No, the key to what Seidel really wants is the word "red-meat" - Seidel gives fuck-all for the great outdoors, what Seidel longs for is a return to manly macho. He should just come out and say it, instead of presenting himself as some kind of advocate of freedom and physical activity. It's his dissembling which reveals why he truly needs a motorcycle to make him feel all virile - because actually, he's a wimp.

guys I have loved

I have an essay devoted to dear Earl Rich, who died in 1997, but while I was spring cleaning today I found this photo of him. I actually scanned it before - it's on his essay page, but I figured I would take a photo too.

I took a whole bunch of pictures of him during our lunch break from work one day in Valley Forge park, which was nearby where we worked in King of Prussia. Photos never did Earl justice - his charm was ineffable. It wasn't just that he was beautiful, he was sweet too, and a bit of a flirt. Almost everybody who knew him was crazy about him. If he had lived to see Facebook I'm sure he'd have many thousand friends.

(And yet, as I mentioned in the essay, he still wasn't the sexiest man I've ever known - that distinction goes to another guy I worked with a couple of years before I met Earl, named Christopher. When I knew him, when he was in his mid-20s, he looked like a cross between a young Harrison Ford and Michaelangelo's David and had a John Goodman-esque personality. Chris is on Facebook and has exactly 9 friends. Well, maybe his wife is paranoid and won't let him be friends with too many women, who have a habit of jumping on him. I once was at a party thrown by his company and while his wife (fiancee at the time) was standing nearby one of the guests on greeting him grabbed him by the face and gave him an on-the-mouth kiss like she was trying to resuscitate him.)

Earl was apparently quite well endowed, as if he wasn't a big enough sex bomb. I know this because his wife told me - we had a brief email correspondence a few years after he died. And actually, he told me himself one day at work. But I was already as attracted to him as I could possibly be, so this news actually had no effect on me. Looking back now it is pretty surprising how casually he told me and how casually I received the information, considering we were coworkers and in the office. Those were strange times.

My ex-boyfriend John had a different kind of charm - nobody would say he was beautiful but he was incredibly sharp and funny - he was the funniest person I have ever personally known. His wit was lighting-fast, which is a big reason I stayed with him in spite of many other things. And when we were solidly together, for a period of eleven years or so (we were on and off for another six years after that) I absolutely worshipped him.

This drawing was done during that time - April 1985 according to the signature, so he would have been 25 at the time. I feel bad I haven't taken better care of the drawing, it's quite good and I let it get stained and frayed around the edges.

John was a good model - he could hold still for hours - and except for my daughter he was my most frequent model. I have dozens of drawings and several paintings of him.

In spite of his intelligence he was a total Luddite, so I doubt he'll ever find out I posted this drawing.


You can see the nice pencil work, if I do say so myself, in this enlarged version.

THE LIBERTINE, a review

So I saw THE LIBERTINE on Friday night because Claire Warden was performing in it. Claire was great of course, and most of the acting was very good. But the staging was to die for. They did some amazing work with lacquered panels on casters. I was quite impressed.

It was a shame that all that effort and accomplishment went into a not very good play.

Now admittedly any play that goes out of its way to say "look how bawdy we are!" rubs me the wrong way, and from the moment the play opens with that obligatory bawdy-time cackling (HAAAH-hah-hah-hah-hah!) I knew this was Not My Cup of Tea.

But the real problem is the plot: a rich alcoholic psychopath drinks himself to death at an early age.

The play opens with the main character, John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester declaring that we won't like him. And it's true - not only did I not like him, I didn't care when he died.

The entire play is mainly a string of scenes to show us just how saucy Jack is. This gets tiresome real fast. The only interesting relationship he has with anybody is with the actor who becomes a sort of protege. But they get a few disjointed scenes over the course of the play that deliver no emotional resonance.

I don't think THE LIBERTINE is supposed to be a cautionary tale - that would certainly not be considered in any way cool or fashionable these days - but it could so easily be seen as one. I mean yeah he drank too much and he spent lots of time with prostitutes, so he ended up a drunk with syphilis. Duh.

I call him a psychopath because the character in the play - and I don't know how close this is to the real guy - has exactly the same characteristics displayed by the psychopaths in the case studies in the book "The Mask of Sanity": he has a variety of emotions but none of them are deep, he betrays every single person he's involved with, from his wife to his mistress to his friends, to the King, but in spite of that, his charm and ability to fake emotions gets them to defend him again and again. He lies whenever it's convenient and has no remorse about it. And he's bored all the time and so always has to "go too far" just to keep himself entertained.

Those case studies were definitely fascinating, at first, but after the third or fourth one they become routine because the behaviors of psychopaths are so much alike. And that's what THE LIBERTINE is like - at first kind of fascinating with all the saucy bawdy naughty shenanigans - but eventually routine and meaningless. Really, he couldn't die fast enough for my liking.

I guess somebody must enjoy this stuff or they wouldn't do it. But what they get out of it I just don't understand - it's not like the world is lacking in bawdiness - anybody with an Internet connection could get the most intense depravity at the click of a mouse. At this point a non-ironic cautionary tale would be the most unusual, "edgy" and surprising thing any theatre group could do.